Author: Anneke
Ace Farren Ford – Thursdays
tapetopia releases Happy Straps – Pleasure 1985-86
Happy Straps was deeply rooted in East Berlin’s alternative scene in the mid 1980s. Café Mosaik was a hotbed of the bohemian scene in Prenzlauer Berg, where dreamers, freaks and artists would meet – ‘negative elements’ who would positively charge each other’s batteries or drive each other insane about their prospects of finally being allowed to leave the GDR. At Café Mosaik Chris Schwartinsky and Jörg (‘Heini’) Heinemann, who had founded the band in Frankfurt-Oder in 1983, met Claudia Böhme and asked her to join the band as a singer…
Extravagant Circus of the Mouth: Slowscan releases Julien Blaine
French artist and poet Julien Blaine was born as Christian Poitevin in Rognac in 1942. Already at the age of twenty he published his first poetry magazine Les Carnets de l’Octéor and turned to action poetry with his piece Rep éléphant 306, in which he interviewed a circus elephant, two years earlier than Michael McClure’s famous poetry reading to lions. In 1976 Blaine launched Doc(k)s, an international magazine…
New Moloko+: FALL (Down with Expressionism! / Nieder mit dem Expressionismus!)
FALL, subtitled Down with Expressionism! / Nieder mit dem Expressionismus!, is a compilation of expressionist poems in English translations and in their original languages. The English translations of the twenty poems and the nine illustrations that accompany them, were done by Ben Schot. Elegantly designed by Robert Schalinski, the book is another…